


the distance between that was sheltering me

by Mici (noharlembeat)



Category: Captain America (2011), Marvel, Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-08
Updated: 2012-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-30 19:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last day before he goes to Basic, and Bucky still hasn't told Steve. The entire neighborhood seems to have it out for him, no less.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the distance between that was sheltering me

_Today is the day_ Bucky thinks, one eye open as he stares at the exposed brick of his bedroom wall. _Today._

He’s been telling himself that for the past week, ever since his orders came in, except that back then it was sort of an abstract date, not a real one. Now it’s real, now it’s tomorrow, and today is the day.  
He keeps repeating that to himself when the phone rings, and that’s where the trouble actually begins. The phone (or Phone, as Bucky likes to think of it) is the reason he and Steve can afford the two-bedroom apartment instead of sharing the one bedroom on 88th Street that smells like feet.

The Phone is the tenement’s communal phone, wired in for everyone in the building who can’t afford one. It sits just outside of the apartment door, which is in the first hallway so if the building ever got robbed, they would probably go for Bucky and Steve’s apartment first. It’s been set to be extra-loud and extra-annoying in case of a midnight emergency, but Steve usually answers it before Bucky even hears it. There are perks to the phone (it means Bucky can tell dames he has one and they can call it) but mostly it’s a loud, obnoxious irritant that isn’t worth the $10 they don’t pay on rent.

This morning, wherever Steve is, it isn’t near the Phone, so Bucky opens the door and answers it even though he’s only wearing his white undershirt and a pair of hastily donned trousers. “’lo?”

“JAMES? JAMES BUCHANAN, IS THAT YOU?” The screech on the other end of the phone makes Bucky hold it out a mile away from his ear and it’s still ringing. “JAMES BUCHANAN I NEED YOU TO GO TO THE STORE AND PICK UP SOMETHING FOR ME.”

Bucky stares at the phone and swears. Mrs. Schwartz lives on the fifth floor for reasons he cannot fathom – possibly she was born in that apartment and has never left in fear of her rent climbing, or maybe she just likes making the schmuck living in the Phone apartment run her errands, but she calls at least seven times a week with something or another to do, which would be fine except for one thing.

Mrs. Schwartz is stone-deaf.

“Hang up the phone, Mrs. Schwartz,” Bucky says as clearly as he can.

“WHAT?”

“ _Hang up the phone_ ,” Bucky tries again, mustering his willpower to not hang up. Usually he would, but Steve doesn’t like it, and _today is the day_. 

“WHAT?”

“HANG UP THE PHONE, MRS. SCHWARTZ,” Bucky finally yells. Bridget Connor from across the hall opens the door when that happens, her eyes wide, her victory rolls mussed, her makeup half-applied. Bucky’ll apologize later, when her dressing gown isn’t half open and he isn’t coaxing the eighty year old grandmother of some foreign dictator to hang up the phone.

Said grandmother is not impressed. “DON’T YOU YELL AT ME JAMES BUCHANAN. WHY I REMEMBER WHEN YOUR FATHER WAS SCAMPING AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD, LET ME TELL YOU.” Bucky turns imploring eyes to Bridget, who can’t help but laugh because she can hear the tinny voice on the other end of the line. 

Mrs. Schwartz begins a diatribe on the elder Barnes and Bucky shakes his head and asks Bridget, because there is no way that the woman on the other end of the line can hear him, “Have you seen Steve?”

“No, but I haven’t been out yet today,” she replies before she giggles and closes her door.

“WHY WOULD I KNOW WHERE STEVEN IS?” Bucky hears screamed at him. It figures her hearing returns when he’s not paying attention. “HE’S YOUR ROOMMATE, JAMES BUCHANAN, AND HE’S TOO GOOD FOR THAT BY FAR. NOW ARE YOU LISTENING? I NEED A SLAB OF BACON.”

“ _Mrs. Schwartz, you’re Jewish_ ,” Bucky protests, but she’s already saying goodbye and slamming the phone down. Bucky sets the Phone down and stares at it for a long time. He would usually ignore such a request, had it been from any other neighbor, but Mrs. Schwartz will make his life hell until she gets her bacon, usually by complaining to everyone in the building, but especially Steve. Bucky suspects it’s some kind of revenge for dating her granddaughter, but how was he supposed to know she was younger than she said? Sixteen year olds don’t usually dress like that!

He goes back into the apartment and gets a real shirt on and a pair of shoes, then his coat and a hat before he heads out. He has to find Steve anyway, because _today is the day_. 

He makes it to the butcher without incident and buys the bacon – he wonders if Mrs. Schwartz and her black heart has heard of a thing called _rationing_ \- and puts it in his coat as he leaves. Steve wouldn’t come to the butcher, not today. First off they don’t have the money, and second off, it’s too early even if they did. 

The neighborhood is in the process of waking up, otherwise. The grocers are putting out baskets of vegetables and limp fruit, newsboys screaming that latest news from the front. Bucky stops in front of Sam Kaplan, his usual newsboy, and pulls the requisite change from his pocket.

"Hey, Bucky," Sam says, handing over a newspaper. "I heard a rumor."

"Yeah?" Bucky asks, thumbing through the paper. The stories from the front are vague and the numbers hazy, but Bucky isn't afraid. "What kind of rumors?"

Sam doesn't look particularly keen on replying, then. He flicks his eyes from side for a second and finally he admits, "I heard you got your orders."

Bucky looks up from his paper then. _Today is the day_ , echoes in his head because that's exactly what happened: a draft notice, hidden in the back of his dresser behind his underwear (because Steve has absolutely no reason to ever go there) and not a word to a soul, but here his newsboy knows, and Bucky wonders for the umpteenth time how the hell does news travel in ths neighborhood, is there some magic that makes it so the ladies never have a lack of gossip when they congregate at the store to buy powdered milk and bicker over their share of sugar?

"Who told you that?" Bucky asks in a way that is meant to be nonchalant but it just comes out slightly ominous instead. 

"Rachel," Sam replies, scratching the back of his head, outing Mrs. Schwartz's granddaughter and his current sweetheart. Rachel Schwartz is more than just the neighborhood gossip - she's a regular knockout punch to the gut, beautiful, smart, sharp as a box of needles, an experimental and fearless kisser, and Bucky figures if Sam is smart he'll ask her to marry him before she gets bored with him. 

Or before Bucky breaks his nose and ruins his good looks, because that's what's looking to happen now. Sam seems to realize a punch might be coming because he hurries to add, "I haven't told anyone else! Is it true?"

"I don't know how Rachel got a hold of that information," Bucky says, but he suspects some well-timed rummaging through his mail during that one visit a couple of weeks back when she came to pick up her grandmothers (or, as she likes to say, her _bubbe's_ ) latest by-Phone errand. But the fact that Sam hasn't told anyone, and Bucky figures that being a neurotic wreck of a newsboy is punishment enough for anyone these days. He lowers his voice, then. "It's true."

"Holy smokes, Bucky. The entire female population of Brooklyn is gonna burst out in _tears_." Sam isn't grinning, but Bucky can't help but feel his lips quirk up in a smile - it's nothing if not a pretty picture, all those dames crying over his departure, even though it's probably just a sham because it won't take more than five minutes for them to remember that he can't really have more than one _real_ sweetheart, and it's none of them. "Even Rachel-"

"Nah," Bucky says, folding up his newspaper and tucking it in his jacket alongside the (probably) black market by-Phone ordered bacon. "No one'll cry over me. Thanks for the 'pape, Sam. I'll see you."

"When do you ship out?" Sam asks, a little louder now because Bucky's moved a half step away, and Bucky doesn't answer except in his head. _Tomorrow_ , is what he should say. _Tomorrow to Basic, so today is the day._

The neighborhood keeps unfolding in front of him - old men are folding out their chairs to sit out and smoke their cigars and read their newspapers, their old ladies are hanging laundry out to dry on the fire escapes. The neighborhood kids are gathering like they do every day that school's out, and even some days when school is in, ganging up in the typical gangs: rough and rowdy boys leading the packs. Bucky sees himself in some of them, Jewish kids and Italian kids and Irish kids and even the occasional Puerto Rican kid, blending in ways their parents don't always approve of, all in caps and short pants with their ears and noses dirty from just a few minutes on the street, as if Brooklyn forced the dirt on them through sheer force of will. Some have shoes and some don't but it doesn't matter as they mob him.

"Bucky!"

"Hey, Bucky!"

"Hey Bucky you wanna come throw a ball with us?"

"We found a baseball, you want to play?"

"We don't have a bat, though."

"Don't tell him that he'll say _no_!"

Bucky laughs. He isn't sure how he became the most popular adult on the street - possibly because he never acts like one, is what Steve would say, but he's surrounded by punks in seconds, their suspenders all flying off their shoulders. 

"Come on, you don't want an old-timer like me around," he says, kneeling, disappearing in a sea of writhing kids who are all rushing to the forefront. 

Charlie Sorrentino, the de facto leader of the gang, stays in the front, though, both feet planted. "We heard you were shipping out," he says with a stubborn tilt to his head. 

Bucky just stares him down. Even the kids? What's going on here? But then one of the other kids yells, "No, that's what your _dad_ said because he wants your sister to stop mooning over him!" 

There's a collective shudder of disgust (these boys, Bucky thinks, are exactly like he was at that age, no sense of romance, but puberty cured that of him and it'll cure it of them). Charlie's sister Isabel went on a double date with him, her cousin and Steve, and she spent the entire date pretending Steve wasn't there.

"Punks," Bucky says, standing. "Don't go around saying that stuff and I'll lob a baseball or two at your heads."

There's a unanimous cheer, the danger of Bucky being shipped off to war forgotten for this instant as a dirty baseball of dubious origins is pressed into his hand and he tosses it. The kids arrange themselves into some game with rules that Bucky's too old to understand by some mysterious nose-picking power, but Bucky remembers that from childhood, too. He remembers Steve sitting on the stoop of the orphanage, watching with those ridiculously big eyes as the other kids took off like tops down the streets and he coughed occasionally.

But Bucky's here playing some backward version of fetch with the next generation's unruly pack of miscreants when he should be looking for him. It takes a while before he can convince them to let him go, and when they do it's with the eternal optimism that tomorrow they can corner him again.

But Bucky knows better.

It's getting late in the morning now and he sees Bridget Connor, her victory rolls perfectly pinned in place and her makeup fully applied making her way down the street hand-in-hand with Mary Castor; they're both whispering at each other and smiling, best friends from the time when teachers thought that alphabetical ordering was the best seating arrangement that god could have invented. Mary looks up and spots him first and giggles behind her hand. "Bucky!" she yells out, waving one hand as she pulls Bridget, their heels clicking against the pavement. They both worked as shopgirls up until recently, but things changed with the war and now he's not altogether sure what they're going to do. There's a lot of talk of girls working in factories, but Bucky can't picture either of them in a dark factory wiring bombs together for Howard Stark. 

"Where are you ladies headed to?" he asks, feeling his lips tilt in a smile that he doesn't quite agree with. He likes them plenty but he still has to find Steve.

Mary looks a little mischevious when she replies, "Did you get your orders?" she asks, because apparently that's all that this neighborhood is capable of thinking of. "Bridget says you'd be really handsome in a uniform, if the way you look all undone in the morning is any indication."

Bridget's mouth drops open in a perfect red O, and Bucky manages not to burst out laughing, because that wouldn't be very kindly to Bridget, who is turning the kind of red usually seen on tomatoes. He can't help but say, "Well I'd be happy to show either of you." 

Both girls burst into frantic laughter, clutching each other for support, both of them a shade of red that matches their lipstick perfectly. They're beautiful, Bucky decides right there, feminine and delicate in a way he won't be seeing a lot of come tomorrow. "Take us to lunch, Bucky," Mary demands and he finds he can't really refuse, thinking about the extra bit of cash in his pocket that he was going to spend on a dinner at the diner down the street tonight, like his last taste of home cooking (since Bucky can't cook, and neither can Steve). The girls are looking at him and he spares a thought for Steve, somewhere out in Brooklyn, obliviously unaware of the fact that his best friend is heading to Basic tomorrow and then the Front after that.

"Come on, I know a place."

The funny thing is that he really doesn’t know why he does it. He doesn’t know why he takes them to the diner when he should be looking in Steve’s favorite places for him – the picture show or the perch above 75th street where he can see the Manhattan skyline perfectly, or that one spot in the park where he sits and sketches all day like a loon. Except that all those places are places that Bucky always finds Steve to drag him off to something good and today is the day, and there’s nothing good left. 

The girls are pretty and funny and they don’t make faces when he tells them he’s shipping out, and they remind him of everything that he’s fighting for (except for the things they can’t remind him of, like a skinny short blond kid who loves the Dodgers and can’t ever stop getting in fights he can’t win, which only makes him think of him _more_ ), and every time he thinks he should go find Steve they give him that _look_ , the one that dames are so good at, the one that promises something they won’t give but Bucky won’t stop chasing.

It's late in the afternoon when they finally release him: lunch turned into egg creams and that turned into a fistfight with Mary's ex-boyfriend; it had been ridiculously satisfying to bash his face in, which turned into a jaunt to the Mission so that the sisters could bandage up his hand and the girls fussed over it until finally they were assuaged that he was fine and sashayed off, their backs of their stockings unlined.

Everyone gives something to the war effort, Bucky thinks.

When he finally heads home Steve is there, sitting at their pathetic little table with a hangdog expression on his face and a new black eye. "Hey," Bucky says, taking his hat off and scowling. "Who'd you get into it with this time?"

"I'm not the only one," Steve retorts, staring pointedly at Bucky's hand.

Bucky only scowls more. "Nevermind me," he says, taking Steve's chin in his hand and pointing it to face him, ignoring Steve's protests until Steve's hand pushes Bucky away. "What's the matter with you?"

"He was harassing Mrs. Davis, Bucky," Steve says with a set to his jaw that says there's no arguing about this. "What should I have done, let him keep it up?"

Mrs. Davis was a war widow from 1917, and she had more cats than anyone knew what to do with. She was also patently crazy. The only person she liked in the world was Steve, who she would occasionally let pet her cats even though his allergies would act up every time he even walked by her.  
Bucky knew better, though, than to argue, because even if she was on a mission to make Steve die from an allergic reaction to her cats, he wasn't one to hear a single bad word about anyone, not when their only crime was eccentricity and possibly feline-assisted accidental homicide.

Okay, maybe Bucky didn't know better than to argue - usually he would because he hated coming home to see Steve with a black eye, but today he doesn't want to argue, not when he has to break that he got drafted, especially not when the last time that the subject of the army came up it was because Steve was 4Fed out of even enlisting for the second time. So Bucky doesn't say anything for a good minute, he just sighs and sits down. "Listen, Steve, I gotta say something."

Steve doesn't look at him right away. Instead, he interrupts, "Why do you smell like a ham sandwich?"

Bucky is so taken aback by that comment that he snaps his mouth shut, then swears, which makes Steve's face get cloudy dark again, but he pulls out the now-remembered bacon for Mrs. Schwartz, still wrapped in the butcher's paper and twine, and drops it on the table. "Damn it, I totally forgot about it."

"Who's it for?" Steve asks, because even with his optimism about most everything (even enlisting when he has asthma and rhuematic fever) he knows better than to assume that Bucky bought it for them.

Bucky stares at the package. "Mrs. Schwartz," he replies. "She called this morning and asked me to get her bacon."

"But she's Jewish," Steve argues, and Bucky shrugs. "Do you want me to take it up to her?"

"It's been sitting in my armpit all day, I don't think anyone'll wanna eat it," Bucky argues, partly because he doesn't want Steve to climb all those stairs and partly, selfishly, because he kind of just wants to break the news and get it over with, and then try and explain to Steve - well, he's not altogether sure about that part. But he's been Steve's best friend since they were five and he's never spent more than a couple of days without seeing him since that time, so this isn't exactly charted territory. He sighs, a deep heaving breath in and a deep heaving breath out. "Look, I gotta say something."

Steve stays quiet this time and Bucky takes that as permission to keep talking. "I set aside enough money for you to stay here for at least a couple of months without another roommate, so you don't have to worry about that," he babbles, because somehow this is a logical starting point for this conversation. His brain works in strange and mysterious ways, but from the look on Steve's face, confusion blooming into shrewd understanding and possibly a hint of betrayal, that Steve got it. "And if you don't want that then you can use the money as a dep-"

"Shut your trap, Barnes," Steve interrupts, and Bucky obeys, his mouth shutting with a click of his teeth, because Steve never talks like that. "What are you saying? You're moving out?"

"It's not-"

"You don't want to live with me anymore?"

"No-"

"Then what's going-"

"I got drafted! I'm supposed to go tomorrow!"

There's a pause, and Steve rubs his forehead. It shouldn't be a surprise - a lot of the guys on their street did too, all across the city, every man over the age of 18 who didn't enlist to do their duty are getting pulled there, dragged to it, forced to Basic and then to the Front, so why is it so surprising that Bucky's going too? 

"Oh," Steve finally manages, and then he _smiles_ \- not a happy-for-you smile but the kind of smile he had on his face the first time some happy couple tried to offer to adopt Bucky, the kind of smile that said he wants everything to be okay but how can this happen? "Well, it was bound to happen, right?"

Bucky nods dumbly for a minute. “You’re not…”

“Not what?” Steve looks confused for a second, even though that smile is still fixed on his face. 

“Not upset?” Bucky realizes how stupid that sounds but it’s too late to take it back, so he amends, an awkward moment too late, “Because you have to handle the rent by yourself?”

Steve shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I wish I could go with you.”

The sentiment leaves Bucky cold. What the hell is he thinking? Of course he can’t _go with him_ , why does Steve do things like that? Does he think he’s invincible? All Bucky wants is to protect Steve, protect him from everything that could possibly be out there, because Steve is the best person he knows and it’s not fair that he can’t go but that’s the world, the world they live in, because there are days that Bucky wakes up and Steve’s panting like a dog in July, just gasping for breath, and “-it scares me to death because I think you’re dying, and you want to go to war? There’s lots of important things to do here, you don’t have to prove anything to anyone! I can’t watch after you there!”

There’s silence as Bucky realizes that his entire inner monologue spilled out, and Steve’s jaw is stubbornly set and offended. He wants to stuff the words back in his mouth, but all that happens is his lips turn down in a scowl. “Are you asking me to stay because you’re worried I’ll die? I don’t need you to watch after me – who do you think is gonna watch after you?”

"Geez, Steve," Bucky starts, but there's a knock on the door, and Steve moves to answer it before Bucky can stop him, before he can tell him to ignore it. Rachel Schwartz is on the other side, her eyes wide enough that Bucky knows she heard the conversation through the thin door but she was trying to find a place that it wasn't awkward to interrupt. "Hey, Rachel," Bucky starts, but she shakes her head.

"My bubbe sent me down to get her bacon," she says, rocking forward on her heels, which in Bucky's estimation are probably too high for a girl her age anyway, but her big brown eyes are fixed on Bucky. He grabs the bacon and nudges Steve to the side, and she takes it, but before she does she lifts up on her tiptoes and kisses him on the cheek, the opposite side of Steve, who is snorting and looking away. "I won't tell," she says, her arms going around Bucky's neck.

"Won't tell what?" Bucky demands, his brows furrowed, but she doesn't reply, just holds him tight for another moment, until he realizes that his hand is on her back and he's pretending she's someone else, someone equally small but without so many extra parts in the front. 

The thought hits Bucky like a sack of bricks and he steps away from her. She holds onto her bacon like it's made of gold. "I'll tell my bubbe to stop calling you for _treyf_ ," before she zooms away, her shoes clicking against the steps. 

Bucky turns to look at Steve, confused, and Steve just shakes his head. "Better get used to that," he says.

Bucky wants to say something else but the words die on his lips. He wants to tell Steve not to worry, that there are lots of important jobs here, that he'll be back before he knows it, that the war will probably end before Basic does, god, that he loves him-

But those words clamp shut on his brain like a vice, terrifying, constricting his breathing in some mimicry of asthma. God, wouldn't that be the irony of the year? Bucky finally manages to shrug. "You want to go get something to eat?"

"I'm buying," Steve says.

They eat something that feels like a last meal, and Bucky jokes with the line cook and with the girls sitting next to them at the counter and with Steve, even, about how he'll give Hitler a punch in the jaw and how Basic won't be so bad except probably the food and the lack of dames, but not about how this is _duty_ or _honor_ or even how good Bucky'll be at soldiering, because all of that dies when Bucky knows that the look on Steve's face will be so painfully, earnestly jealous that Bucky can go when he can't.

Even if Bucky doesn't want to.

The neighborhood is going to sleep by the time they wind their way back to their apartment. There are stray cats prowling the alleys along with the occasional drunk (Mr. Crepshaw, who lives in their tenement and whose son was part of the 123rd is lying facedown with something that smells like whiskey, for instance). The kids are all in bed, but Bucky can hear some mothers yelling about dirty feet and dirty ears and dirty caps, and the sounds of people dragging their lives back in from the outdoors of the streets of Brooklyn.

But mostly he hears the familiar rattle of Steve's breath as they pace back, and he wonders how he'll spend the next few weeks, the next months, the next years, who knows, with the state of this war, without it.

There aren't any comments as Steve heads for bed until the Phone rings, shrilly, angrily. Bucky looks at Steve who just looks back and says, "I'm on my own to answer it from now on," and Bucky shakes his head and can't believe he's falling for it as he goes to pick it up.

"Hello?" 

"JAMES? JAMES BUCHANAN IS THAT YOU?"

"Mrs. Schwartz," Bucky says almost like a swear, and presses his back against the wall. "Hang up the phone," he says, but there's no passion to it this time.

"JAMES BUCHANAN, RACHEL TOLD ME THAT YOU'RE SHIPPING OUT IN THE MORNING AND I WANTED TO TELL YOU-"

"Hang up the phone."

"YOU'RE A GOOD BOY, JAMES BUCHANAN."

"What?"

Her voice goes down in volume, so it's mostly not-yelling. "Rachel and I will watch Steve for you. You be a good boy, now, and come back, do you hear me, James Buchanan?"

Bucky stares at the phone and finally manages to grope out a _thank you_ before she says goodbye (for the first time ever) and hangs up. Bucky presses the Phone into the reciever for a minute, and shakes his head before he picks it back up and sets it down gently. The ring tone is tinny and far away, but once Bucky is back in the apartment, he can't even hear the faintest echo.

**Author's Note:**

> Historical inaccuracies probably abound, forgive me. Also, trayf, for those not in the know, means something that is not-kosher (like bacon!)


End file.
